


Draw me out

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Domeric Bolton and Lyanna Stark go riding.  AU in which L + D = ? and Domeric's been aged up so this isn't creepy in a bad way.<br/>Excerpt from what will eventually be a longer fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draw me out

He chases after her, his horse hot on the heels of hers, but it’s impossible to overtake her. Lyanna is a skilled horsewoman, with a fine, firm hand, and she’s mindful of the gullies and wends and ways of the path in a way that is instinctual. It’s as if her mount is part of her flesh and blood, and Domeric thinks, not for the first time, how well she would have fit with the Ryswells, and steels himself for the courage to ask if one day, she wouldn’t mind the journey west to the Rills. He has a feeling that her jaw would drop with awe as his did, on his first visit to Grandfather’s stables. 

He catches up with her only when she stops in a clearing, the sides of her mare heaving. As she dismounts, it’s with an easy grace, and she holds out a hand to him as he slides off his own horse. 

“Let them breathe,” Lyanna says, sitting on a rock, pulling out her skin and taking a long haul of water. When it’s offered to Domeric, he holds up a hand, smiling, and when he seats himself awkwardly on an old stump across the way, her nose wrinkles with a frown. “What good is sitting over there?” she says, and her voice is loud, only backed by birdsong and the occasional sound of the wind in the leaves. 

Domeric’s face flushes, and he knows that it’s not from the exertion of riding. He hopes that Lyanna doesn’t realize the cause of his embarrassment, but she pretends not to, or she doesn’t see, and beckons him to her. 

“You’d better drink, my lord Domeric,” she says, her voice gently teasing. “Your dear mother would never forgive me if you were to exhaust yourself.”

Domeric finds his voice. “I am a seasoned horseman,” he says, speaking with great dignity. “Such foolishness is beneath me.”

“Then drink,” she says, thrusting the skin in his face, and drink he does, realizing that as he does, his lips press where hers had been but a moment ago. 

Lyanna brushes the flyaway hair from her eyes. “So beautiful,” she says then, looking around her. They are in Bolton lands, in the forest that grows between Lord Roose’s domain and Hornwood. “I never would have imagined that it would be so.” She stops, biting her lip. “I mean. You know. I didn’t mean it as it sounded.” 

Domeric laughs then at her discomfiture. It’s rare that Lyanna is the one left awkward, and although he loves her, has loved her for as long as he can remember, she has always ruled him. He doesn’t mind, but there are times when he curses himself for his retiring nature, for his gentleness, so different from his father and mother, so different from _her_. But Lyanna seems to take to it, and they fit. They always have, even when he was a timid boy hiding behind his mother’s skirts at Winterfell. 

She’d drawn him out. He loved her for it. 

“I understand,” he said. “To me, they’ve always been beautiful because I’ve known that they were there.” And before he can stop himself, he presses her hand. “So many things are that way.” He smiles shyly, and Lyanna’s frown dissipates. She twines her fingers with his and squeezes his in kind. 

“They will wonder where we’ve gone,” she says then, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Mother and Father, Lord and Lady.” 

“They won’t worry,” Domeric murmurs. “They know I am with you.” 

When he kisses her, even though it is she who escalates it, she who kisses deeper, she who wraps him in her arms, it is like nothing else, and to Domeric, in that moment, there is nothing else.


End file.
